Blueberries for Sal

When I was little, growing up in Michigan, August was the month that my sisters and I would ride our bikes to the woods at the end of Swede road. We looped buckets over our handlebars because we were on a mission—picking blueberries.

Blueberry picking was a hot and sometimes painful business. For some reason the best berry bushes were always surrounded by bushes with thorns. You had to sidle your way through the prickly branches and then were plagued by bees and mosquitoes. It was slow going filling a bucket, but always worth it. First of all, there was mom’s promise to make pie. But the best way to eat blueberries was in a bowl, with milk and sugar, stirring so that the milk turned blue. Imagine eating a pint of blueberries like this now with blueberries, at $5.99 a pint, more if you buy organic, which with blueberries, you should do.

Of course, it was a different world. Consider the differences. What parent today could send their kids on bikes to spend several hours in the woods at the end of the street? (For that matter, how many of us have woods at the end of our street?)

What brings me to this tangent is my cancer-fighting diet. Blueberries star. Blueberries have one of the highest antioxidant activity rates of any fruit. Blueberries are a wonderful fruit, and while I can’t rationalize eating an entire bowl with milk and sugar, I have been putting them in my oatmeal, in my pancakes, on top of my whole wheat bagel, and on my waffles.

Cherries are good too. And because I lived in Michigan, there was naturally a cherry tree in our back yard. It takes a few years for a cherry tree to begin producing a hefty amount of cherries but once it gets going, the fun thing to do is to have a competition spitting pits at the neighbor’s garage from the picnic table. Of course, the neighbors did not particularly care for this activity. (But that was only ½ as much fun as participating in a pit-spitting contest at the Barber’s house--another family with Michigan roots--where else can you spit pits at each other at the dinner table?)

When I was a blueberry picking, cherry-pit spitting little girl in Michigan, I was a skinny little thing. I rode my bike, did hand-springs, I broke into a sprint the minute I stepped out of school and liked to go to the park alone just to swing and think. My dad made us oatmeal for breakfast and despite our efforts to fool our parents (the old peas-under-the rim-of the plate-trick) we were made to eat our vegetables. On Saturday movie nights we ate popcorn with orange juice—with the very occasional root beer float treat. As for fast food, McDonalds was a rare event, such as the night mom and dad had bridge club, and Dog and Suds was reserved for unique celebrations or difficulties, like a broken stove.

Spin ahead with me now some 40-odd years, from my Michigan roots to this present-day Illinois suburban self. The world has changed. I’ve changed. I’m no longer the skinny girl who loved nothing more than a juicy orange, a good book and a stretch of green grass to lie in. I still love a good book, but with so many choices, would an orange be my first pick? I have to admit that for the last several years, my favorite orange snack has been Cheetos!

When my husband and I were in East Germany (pre-1981) I remember thinking that all we needed to do to end the cold war was to take the communists and drop them off at the Jewel-- the difference being choices. In East Germany we shopped every day because there was no ability to store food, there was no abundant supply to save for later and we never knew what might be there. We saw bananas once in four months. When we would go for a walk after dinner, we could tell that everyone had the same thing to eat that night. Cauliflower was in the store that day and we could smell cauliflower in the air throughout town. I adore capitalism as a result of this experience, and yet, perhaps the abundance of choice that I have reveled in for so many years has done me no favors.

Seventy per cent of cancer can be attributed to lifestyle, but can I possibly blame my cancer on capitalism and a life of privilege? I don’t think so. The change from a skinny little girl who loved to run and eat blueberries, to this person I am, one who has to force herself to eat fruit and vegetables and choose exercise over reading a book, has been a slow erosion of discipline, developing tastes and good choices. I still love capitalism. I especially love the ability to choose.

I choose to change. Somewhere inside me is a skinny little girl who longs to climb a tree with a book under her arm and an apple in her pocket for later. Surely that’s a good compromise.